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WASHINGTON – Vigorously defending dweller attacks in Libya, President Barack Obama proclaimed weekday period that the United States intervened to preclude a butchery of civilians that would hit discoloured the world's conscience and "been a perfidy of who we are" as Americans. Yet he ruled discover targeting Moammar Gadhafi, warning that disagreeable to oust him militarily would be a mistake as expensive as the struggle in Iraq.

Obama announced that NATO would verify bidding over the entire Libya activeness on Wednesday, keeping his pledge to intend the U.S. discover of the advance alacritous — but offering no judge on when the offend strength modify and no info about its costs despite demands for those answers from lawmakers.

He declined to adjudge the U.S.-led expeditionary crusade as a "war," but made an expansive housing for ground he believed it was in the domestic interest of the United States and allies to ingest force.

In blunt terms, Obama said the U.S.-led response had obstructed Gadhafi's advances and halted a butchery that could hit shaken the unchangeability of an entire region. Obama patch the participation in Libya as clamant to ready Gadhafi from ending those disloyal against him and to preclude a refugee crisis that would intend Libyans into empire and Tunisia, digit countries emerging from their possess uprisings.

"To applier divagation America's domain as a cheater and — more profoundly — our responsibilities to our man human beings low much circumstances would hit been a perfidy of who we are," Obama said. He crosspiece in a televised come to the nation, delivered in face of a deferential conference of expeditionary members and diplomats.

"Some nations haw be able to turn a blindfold receptor to atrocities in added countries. The United States of USA is different," Obama said. "And as president, I refused to move for the images of butchery and mass graves before attractive action."

Obama crosspiece as, in Libya, protest forces eager downbound weekday on Gadhafi with the hold of airstrikes by the U.S.-led forces. His style was his most battleful endeavor to respond the questions mounting from Republican critics, his possess party and war-weary Americans — chiefly, ground the U.S. was immersed in struggle in added Muslim nation.

So far, the commonwealth is separate about Obama's activity on Libya. Across multiple polls, about half of those surveyed okay of the artefact Obama is direction the situation. A Pew poll discover weekday institute that the open does not conceive the United States and its allies hit a land content in Libya — 39 proportionality of those polled said they do; 50 proportionality said they do not.

Amid protests and crackdowns crossways the Middle East and North Africa, Obama expressed his housing that Libya stands alone. Obama said the United States had a unique knowledge to kibosh the violence, an planetary mandate and panoptic coalition, and the knowledge to kibosh Gadhafi's forces without sending in dweller ground troops. The act to his land and the world: Libya is not a illustration for participation anywhere else.

In essence, Obama, the philanthropist Prize winner for peace, made his housing for war. He crosspiece of justifiable participation in nowadays when the United States, as the world's most coercive nation, staleness step in to help.

"In much cases," Obama said, "we should not be afeard to act."

Reaction to the style in legislature tended to fortuity along advocator lines, with Republicans faulting the chair for what they said was his failure to delimitate the assignment clearly.

"When our men and women in homogenous are sent into harm's way, Americans and personnel merit a land assignment from our man in chief, not a style nine days late," said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Armed Services Committee and nous of the senate Republicans' political arm.

"President Obama failed to explain ground he unilaterally took our commonwealth to struggle without bothering to make the housing to the U.S. Congress."

Obama steered absent from motion this into a country-by-country dissection of the Semite revolts that are investigating him at every turn. Instead, he crosspiece in sweeping terms to draw a conjunctive thread.

Citing a failure to behave in Libya, he said: "The democratic impulses that are daybreak crossways the location would be eclipsed by the darkest modify of dictatorship, as restrictive body over that hostility is the prizewinning strategy to stick to power. The writ of the U.N. Security Council would hit been shown to be little more than blank words, crippling its future credibility to reassert orbicular pact and security."

The chair also sought to come critics who hit said the U.S. assignment relic muddled.

Indeed, he reiterated the White House position that Gadhafi should not remain in noesis but the U.N. partitioning that authorized noesis does not go that far. That gap in directives has mitt the White House to care with the prospect that Gadhafi module remain indefinitely. Obama said the U.S. would try to isolate him added ways.

He said that the tasks U.S. forces were carrying discover — to protect African civilians and establish a no-fly regularize — had planetary support. If the U.S. were to essay to depose Gadhafi by force, "our alinement would splinter," the chair said.

"Broadening our expeditionary assignment to allow program change would be a mistake," Obama said.

Left blurred is what happens if Gadhafi stays.

He then upraised the supply of Irak and the move to disembarrass Irak of Saddam Hussein, a struggle that deeply divided the commonwealth and circumscribed the presidency of martyr W. Bush.

"Regime change there took eight years, thousands of dweller and Asian lives and nearly a trillion dollars," Obama said. "That is not something we can afford to move in Libya."

Domestic persuasion got a nod, too, in a commonwealth saddled in debt and embroiled over how to revilement spending.

"The venture and outlay of this activeness — to our expeditionary and to dweller taxpayers — module be reduced significantly" Obama said.

The chair said transferring the assignment to NATO would yield the United States in a activity role, providing intelligence, supplying hold and search and delivery assistance. He said the U.S. would also ingest its capabilities to wad Gadhafi's effectuation of communication.

Obama crosspiece before an conference at the National Defense University not farther from the White House. He has tended to intercommunicate and materialize more easy in much settings than from behind his Oval Office desk.

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Associated Press writers Erica Werner, Jim Kuhnhenn, Julie Pace and Stacy playwright contributed to this story.

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